Open-slot railway crossing



- Aug. .4, 1925. 1,548,162

w. G. NICHOLS OPEN SLOT RAILWAY CROSSING Filed lied. 17, 1924 Patented Aug. 4, 1925.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

I WESLEY G. NICHOLS, OF CHICAGO HEIGH'1S, ILLINOIS, ASSIGNOR TO AMERICAN MANGANESE STEEL COMPANY, OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, A CORPORATION OF IAINE.

OPEN-SLOT RAILWAY CROSSING.

Application filed December 17, 1924. Serial No. 756,877.

To all whom zt-may concern:

Be it known that I, WESLEY G. NICHOLS, a citizen of the United States, residing at Chicago Heights, in the county of Cook and State of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Open-Slot Railway Crossings, of which the following is a specification.

This invention relates to railway crossings, preferably made of manganese steel castings, and has for its object to provide a crossing structure which can be successfully produced by that method of manufacture, in a condition which will be particularly Well adapted to withstand the very severe stresses to which such a structure is subjected in use.

It has long been recognized that the interruption of the tread surfaces of each track of a railway crossing, necessitated by the continuity of the flangeways of the intersecting track, causes very severe stresses to develop in the crossing member as a -result of the ha-n'imering of the wheels against the far sides of the intersecting flangeways. It has been proposed to insure the integrity of the crossing member under these stresses by making the casting exceedingly heavy, and it has also been proposed to minimize the tendency to crack the casting on lines coinciding with flangeways, by increasing the depthof the flang'eway sufficiently to insure a measure of resiliency in the walls which receive the hammer blows of the wheels.

The present invention proposes to meet the conditions by a novel construction of crossing member, the underlying feature of which consists in constructing the flangeways of a crossin member in the form-of open slots extending entirely through the casting in the vertical direction, and continuing longitudinally of each fiangeway from the point of intersection of the flangeways such a distance as will permit the shock of wheel hammer occurring at the intersection to be largely or wholly absorbed by the far side of the interrupted treadway, before it reaches the web or filling that defines the flangewayspace at the outer end of the cast-- ing; an incidental featu're'of the invention,

however, consistin in reinforcing those portions of the castings which are separated the flangeway slots through the medium of suitable tension members, for instance, bolts bearing nuts, through which the bolts may be placed under substantial loads of initial tension that will still-further relieve the reduced connecting members wat the and, in fact, di-

outer ends of the casting, rectlysustain the treadways themselves under hammering shocks from the wheels. The bolts are preferably located at substantial. angles to the walls of the intersecting of the bolts, each crossing sector iszformed with a diagonal wall constituting the base of a triangle of which the flan'geway walls form the two sides. While the reduced 'web portions, which define the widths of the flangeways at points remote from the intersection, are preferably formed integrallywith the sec-tors of the casting, they may, in some instances, be in the nature of filler blocks held in place by transverse bolts, and whether these slot-defining webs are integral or separately formed, such transverse e y employed for the sake bolts are prefera-b of reinforcement.

In the accompanying drawing, in which two embodiments of the invention are shown by way of illustration-.1 Figure 1 is a plan view of a cast metal railway crossing embodying. the several features of the invention. Figure 2 is a vertical section through one ofthe legs of the crossing, with parts be-i yond shown in elevation, the section being taken on the line 2"2" of Figurel.

' Figure 3 is a view similar to Figure 2 but showin a modification which consists primarily ln'the addition of a reinforce plate a vertical section of a fr'agas a seating for the nuts on the diagonal said sectors being separated by intersecting flangeways 5. According to the present invention, the flangeways 5 are constituted by slots extending entirely through the casting in the vertical direction and continuing horizontally from the point of intersection longitudinally of each flangeway to a point sufliciently remote from the said intersection to provide for absorption of a substantial portion, if not all, of the stresses which are set up in the members 1, 2, and 3 when, from the direction of movement of wheels, they happen to constitute the far side of the flangeway which divides them, and thus re ceive hammering shocks from the wheels. The through slots 5 are, in other words, ter minated by spacing webs 5 in therespective outer legs of the casting, which spacing members, while necessarily low enough heneath the upper surfaces of the casting to avoid interference with the flanges of the wheels, need have only such vertical dimension as will be necessary to resist the stresses imposed upon them; for instance, the vertical dimension illustrated at 5 in Figures2 and 3, thus leaving the vertical walls of the fiangeways as resilient as practicable; and

- especially may the web members 5 be thus vertically and longitudinally restricted in dimension it the outer legs or the casting are reinforced by transverse bolts, such as shown at 6. With the presence of proper reinforcement, such as provided by bolts 6 and the diagonal reinforce bolts presently to be described, the web portions 5 may even be reduced to a horizontal wall 5 and a' vertical wall 5, as shown in Figure 4, thus greatly reducing the thickness of metal and facilitating proper heat treatment of the casting.

In order to reinforce the sectors 1, 2, 3 and 4, at points oi greatest stress and throughout the slotted portions of the casting, diagonal bolts 7 are passed through the casting from each sector to a diagonally opposite sector, there being preferably, two bolts in each such relation, and the bolts are thus caused to assume positions at substantial angles to the fiangeway slots 5 or the walls of such slots that receive the wheel,

hammering. These diagonal bolts are, of course, in planes sufiiciently below the tread surfaces to avoid interference with the wheel flanges. In order that said bolts may have a firm seating for their nuts, each sector of the casting-is provided with a diagonal wall 8 related substantially as the base of a tr1angle, of which the flangeway walls of the particular sector constitute the sides, said walls being substantially perpendicular to the direction of the bolts, and the bolts are seated against these walls through the medium of nuts 9 which adapt the bolts tor be placed under initial stresses of tension and thus better adapt them to completely resist loadsimposed upon the sectors of the crossing.

lln order that the sectors 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as such portions of the outer legs of the casting as may involve increased thickness of metal, 'may be properly heat treated without impairing the substantially vertical support of the crossing member, said sectors or leg portions are of so-called solid tubular construction described in United States Letters Patent No. 1,460,107, of June 26, 1923; that is to say, said portions of the castings are essentially solid blocks of metal,

so far as concerns the support which they at ford to vertical loads, but they are so opened up by vertical bores or corings as to leave no portion of the metal of a greater thickness than that which can be properly tempered by the heat treatment which is common in manganese steel castings. And by way of carrying forward the idea of developing ample metal in the structure without defeating proper heat treatment, the diagonal walls 8, as illustrated in Figure 3, may be originally formed of channel section and provided with a filling or reinforce plate 8 to receive the nuts 9 of the diagonal reinforce bars I ll claim:

1. A cast metal railway crossing, comprising intersecting-treads and fiangeways; a fiangeway adjacent the point of intersection comprising a slot extending entirely through the casting.

2. A cast metal railway crossing, comprising intersecting treads and flangeways; a flangeway adjacent the point of intersection comprising a slot extending entirely through the casting but closed by a bottom web at a place remote from such intersection.

3. A cast metal railway crossing, comprising intersecting tread and guard portions with intervening flangeways; the fiangeways at and adjacent the point of intersection comprising slots extending through the casting; and the treads and guards defining the slot-portions of the flangeways being constructed for independent vertical support.

4. A railwayv crossing member, comprising tread and guard sectors and intersecting flangeways, the fiangeways comprising slots extending entirely through the casting.

5. A railway crossing structure, comprising tread and guard sectors separated by intersecting fiangeways comprising slots extending vertically entirely through the casting; said fiangeways being defined by spacing webs at points remote from their point of intersection.

6. A crossing structure, comprising tread and guard sectors, outer leg portions, intersecting flangeways extending vertically leg portions bein rem bolts. g

entirely through the casting, and spacing webs within the portions of the'flan eways ly' g in the outer leg portions; sai outer orced by transyerse rising tread and guard sectors separated slots extending vertically through the castmg, outer leg portions, and web portions limiting the depth of the flangeways insaid outer le portions; said web portions comprising iorizontal walls having a thickness extending from the bottom of the flangeway but a portion of the distance toward the under-surface of the leg portions, and vertical walls extending horizontal walls.

8. A railway crossing, comprising tread and guard sectors separated by'flangeway slots extending vertically through the casting, outer leg portions, and web portions limiting the depth of the flangeways in said outer le portions; said web portions comprising horizontal walls havin a thickness exten ing from the bottom 0 the flange way but a portion of the distance toward the undersurface of the leg portions, and vertical walls extending downwardly from downwardly from said said horizontal walls; and said leg portions having transverse reinforce bolts.

9. In a railway crossing, comprising tread 10. In arailway crossing structure, tread and guard sectors separated by vertical slot flangeways and having each a diagonal vertical base wall, and reinforce bolts extending through dia nally opposite sectors of the crossing an having seating members meeting said base walls.

11. In a railway'erossing structure, tread and guard sectors separated by vertical slot flangeways and having each a diagonal ver-- tical base wall, and reinforce bolts .extend ing through digonally opposite sectors of the crossing and having seating members meeting said base walls; said base walls being of channel section and having reinforce Elites receiving the seating members of the .Signed at Chicago, Illinois, this 8th day of December, 1924. I

WESLEY G. NICHOLS. 

